James Potter and the Morrigan Web

by G. Norman Lippert

  Their shadows crept over Whinnie as they advanced on her, their wands pointing at her heart. Whinnie shrank back, cringing, and then, suddenly and desperately, she rammed her hand into her purse again. She grasped something, yanked it out, and flung the purse away.

  "Back off!" she screamed, raising her trembling fist. In it, shaking wildly, was the antique pistol, its round barrel glistening blackly in the pale light.

  Across the street, the observing bum gasped and hunkered behind a trash can. James' sharpened, dreaming senses saw it all.

  The sister and brother stared at the weapon in Whinnie's hand. Then, happily, the sister began to laugh. "Muggles and their weapons," she shook her head. "My dear, that antique pop-gun cannot hurt us. You're wasting time, and our patience is running thin. Give us your talisman. Do it now, or we will take it from your corpse."

  Whinnie locked her elbow, holding the pistol full length. She had never held a gun before, was not exactly sure that she could pull the trigger, even if she knew it would fire, which she did not. She pointed it alternately at the woman, then the man.

  The sister lunged. James saw it, saw the sudden, almost bestial litheness of it, and he once again tried to call out a warning. This time, however, his voice would not have been heard even if he'd had one, for a loud, flat BANG struck the air, momentarily drowning out every other sound. A split-second later, silence fell, layered only with the senseless moan of the wind and sand-like scurry of blowing snow.

  The sister stepped backwards, out from the beneath the bookstore's awning. She lowered her wand and looked down at herself in the wintry daylight. Drops of blood pattered the icy pavement between her feet. A moment later, she crumped to her knees, looked up in shock, and keeled forward onto her face.

  "You…" the brother breathed, his eyes wide and shocked as he looked over his shoulder, his wand still raised in his own fist. "You killed her." His voice was filled with wonder. He repeated himself, as if he could scarcely believe his own words. "You killed her!"

  "I didn't mean to!" Whinnie pleaded, lowering the smoking pistol. She stared at it in her hand in horror, as if it was a small, vicious monster. "She made me! She was going to--"

  "YOU KILLED HER!" The brother screamed, so strenuously that his voice cracked and his eyes bulged. He extended his wand, levelled it at Whinnie's face, and spoke the phrase James dreaded hearing. "Avada Kedav--"

  A figure bowled into the brother at the exact moment that a bolt of green light leapt from his wand. The bum, after a fierce inner struggle, had bolted across the street, stumbled over the dead witch, and tackled the brother at the precise moment that he cast the killing curse. As a result, the curse exploded in all directions, bouncing off the enclosed display windows, and hurling both the brother and the bum out into the street. They skidded, leaving a long black scrape on the snow. A horn honked suddenly, accompanied by the juddering grind of braking tires. A garbage truck slewed to a halt, barely avoiding the pair in the street. The driver cursed loudly behind the windscreen and wrenched open his door.

  The brother scrambled to his feet, waving his wand wildly, but the moment was lost. More people were descending onto the scene now, emerging from nearby shops and vehicles. The brother threw one last look at his dead sister, and then, his face etched with rage, disapparated, leaving only a crack of collapsing air and a swirl of snowy smoke.

  "What the ever loving hell!?" the garbage truck driver bellowed, leaning out his door. "Weren't there just… two of you?"

  The bum shook his head slowly. "I have no idea what you're talking about," he said emphatically. "I'm not crazy. You tell them. Understand? I'm not crazy. And neither are you."

  The garbage truck driver stared at the bum, then at the dead woman lying on a pool of dark red blood. After a moment, he nodded agreement. "I'll radio for the P.D."

  In the shadow of the bookstore's deep alcove, Whinnie lay dead, strangely unmarked, victim of the killing curse. The pistol was still clenched in her hand.

  Darkness descended, again, and this time James welcomed it. He had a sense that the dream was over, that whatever answer the dream was meant to provide, it was now up to him to divine it.

  But the dream pulled him onward again, carrying him in another gust of advancing time. In it, he saw disconnected snippets of the story, like headlines in a shredded issue of the Daily Prophet…

  The dead witch was a mystery to the police, firstly because she bore not a shred of identification, and no one ever came forward to collect her body. Instead, her corpse lay in the Philadelphia morgue for two days before it was mysteriously stolen in the dead of night, never to be seen again. The second mystery was even more perplexing. The anonymous woman had been killed by a bullet wound to the chest, apparently fired by the other dead woman, one Whinnie Holm. The problem was that the gun in Ms. Holm's hand was over one hundred years old, a rather quaint antique, and empty of bullets. The men in the police forensics laboratory were quite sure that the weapon had not been fired in many, many decades.

  Whinnie's son went to live with his last remaining relative, his uncle, who provided well for him financially, but did very little to nurture him. The enigmatic pistol was once again packed away, forgotten in the trunks of his dead mother's things. For simplicity's sake, the boy eventually adopted his uncle's last name and even called him father.

  Although he never once really meant it.

  And strangely enough, from the moment the antique pistol was packed away in the basement below his feet, the boy never again suffered any ill effects of his old sickness.

  These images dissolved into silence as James floated with the wind, carried again into an uncertain future which was still, strangely, someone else's past.

  Out of the darkness, Whinnie's old car tooled into view, its engine rumbling roughly, a cloud of blue smoke coughing from its tailpipe. Sunlight flashed daggers from the rusty chrome and dusty windscreen as the car slowed, angled toward a curb, and laboriously, reluctantly, died.

  The driver's door opened with a screech and a young man stepped out, blinking affably at the brightness of a crowded city street. James sensed that he was still in Philadelphia, although some years had passed. The man was tall, thin, with long sandy hair hanging in lank curtains around an amiable face. He wore a grungy flannel shirt untucked over jeans with holes torn in the knees. And yet, watching him, James had the distinct impression that the man was not poor. This, inexplicably, was the fashion of his time. This suspicion was verified as a similarly dressed young woman approached, a clutch of books in her arms and her hair matted in stiff, frizzy ropes, held down by an old kerchief.

  "That thing's not exactly earth friendly, Quinn," the young woman commented, glancing at the cloud of dissipating blue smoke. "Where's the bike today?"

  "Packed in the backseat, along with the rest of my earthly possessions," the man, Quinn, replied easily, leaning against the Toronado's fender. "I'm on my way east, college bound."

  "Seems to me like you're headed nowhere fast," the girl sniffed. "That thing smells like roasted cat pee and looks ready to fall apart."

  The man patted the car's bonnet affectionately. "She'll be fine. Just needs a little oil and TLC. Besides, I can't just leave her in Philly. She'd just get tossed into the nearest junkyard, and I can't let that happen. She belonged to my mom, after all."

  James understood. This was Whinnie's son, all grown up. Everyone called him Quinn-- the last name of his step-father-- but the young man secretly disliked it. He meant to move away, to New York, where his real father had gone so many years earlier. It wasn't that he meant to find his birth father-- Quinn had never known him or heard anything from him, and had surprisingly little interest in changing that fact. It was simply that, as long as he stayed in Philadelphia, he would always remain Quinn, the son of the wellknown personal injury attorney, whose face appeared on billboards all over town along with the equally well known slogan: WHEN IT COMES TO YOUR CLAIM, QUINN WINS!

  But there was more to it even than tha
t. Philadelphia was where his mother had been killed, over a decade ago. Quinn only barely remembered her as a sadly beautiful face and gentle, loving hands. He had hoarded everything that had once belonged to her, including the old black Toronado, but could no longer bear to stay in the city that had witnessed her death. Especially since the man who had killed her might still be living there, uncaught, walking free even to this day.

  Because Quinn knew more about his mother's death than did anyone else. He was good at figuring things out, and had had a much greater interest in the mystery than the police detectives.

  Only a few summers earlier, Quinn had sought out the only witness to his mother's death, a derelict who haunted the wharf district and occasionally showed up at the several homeless shelters scattered among the warehouses and liquor stores. It was at one of the soup kitchens that Quinn had finally found and interviewed him. At first, the old man had been stubbornly reluctant to talk, adamantly insisting that he had told everything there was to tell. When he realized that Quinn was the dead woman's son, however, he slowly relaxed. He admitted to Quinn that there had been another person present-- a man. The man had been the actual murderer, in fact, using a weapon unlike anything the bum had ever seen, and which he could not even describe.

  "And then," the bum whispered conspiratorially, warming to the subject, his watery eyes bright and intense. "And then, when it was all over, the guy just up and… and…"

  "What?" sixteen-year-old Quinn asked, trying not to grab the bum by the collar and throttle him in his impatience. "What'd he do? Tell me!"

  The bum looked evasively around the nearly deserted shelter, his mouth clamped shut. When he looked back at Quinn again, his face was etched with a sort of stubborn defiance. "I'll tell you what e' did," he said in a cracked whisper. "But you won't b'lieve me. The guy up and disappeared. That's what."

  Quinn simply stared at the bum's stubbly face and red, prune-like nose, and his stomach slowly sank. The bum was insane. Obviously nothing he said could be taken seriously. All of Quinn's efforts to find and interview him had been a waste of time, a total joke. Disappointment gave way to rage and Quinn almost struck the bum. His fist clenched on the cracked table top. To stop himself, he climbed brusquely from his seat and began to stalk toward the shelter's front door.

  "He disappeared!" the bum called after him, abandoning secrecy, suddenly frantic to make Quinn believe him. "I didn't tell nobody 'cause they'd think I was crazy, just like you do! But it's the truth! He disappeared right out of thin air. Like some kinda magic trick!"

  Quinn slammed through the shelter's door, leaving the bum raving behind him, calling after him. The old man was crazy-- totally deranged. Quinn berated himself for wasting his time, for believing there were answers to be found.

  And yet, even as he raged aimlessly along the hot, crowded street, he wondered.

  Was it possible the bum was telling the truth? Maybe he was not deluded, or at least not totally deluded. Maybe there had been another person there that night, a man, with some sort of inexplicable weapon, something that could kill without leaving any mark. If so…

  If so, then Quinn's mother's murderer was still out there somewhere, possibly still in Philadelphia, uncaught and free, living out his days while his mother lay in a cheap grave at the edge of town, dead these many years-- dead by his detestable hand.

  The idea was a poison seed in Quinn's brain, sending out roots of suspicion, blossoming into flowers of hate. For this reason, more than any other, he had decided that he would leave Philadelphia once and for all, and never look back.

  "We'll miss you, Quinn," the young woman with the dreadlocks said with a sigh. "Make sure you come back and visit the old gang sometimes."

  "I will," Quinn smiled, but the smile was thin. Both James and the young woman saw it. She nodded, gave Quinn a little half hug, and then walked on without looking back. Quinn watched her go, gave a brisk little sigh, and then began to walk himself, heading in the opposite direction.

  Silently, James followed.

  Quinn cut through a cramped alley, emerging into a much narrower street. There was no traffic here, but the noise of lorries and buses could be heard nearby, droning over the rooftops. Quinn glanced left and right, frowned to himself, and then struck off to the right, following a line of brick and glass storefronts and threadbare awnings. He finally stopped in front of a sort of market and peered into the dusty window, cupping his hands to his face to cut the glare. A row of crates beneath the window displayed an odd inventory of whisk brooms, athletic shoes, umbrellas, and cans of something called Vegemite, stacked in a haphazard pyramid.

  Quinn shrugged to himself and pushed through the door, jangling a bell hung overhead.

  "Hello?" he called, scanning the crowded shop for a counter. Sunbeams cut through the gloom, swimming with brilliant specks of dust and obscuring the shadowy corners. "Anyone home?"

  "Morning," a voice replied faintly. "Not open yet, actually. Not that it matters. Payin' customers is always welcome."

  Quinn turned toward the voice and saw an old man behind a counter, easing himself out of an antique recliner with a groan. The area behind the counter was crammed with an enormous desk, several wooden filing cabinets, a precariously overloaded coatrack, a hot-plate and coffee maker, and what appeared to be several decades' worth of newspapers, dirty dishes, and miscellaneous inventory. An electric fan stood atop one of the file cabinets, ruffling the newspapers and playing in the old man's tufty white hair.

  "Hi," Quinn said, putting a smile on his face. "Sorry. I was actually, uh…" he glanced around the store again, taking in the amazing assortment of completely unrelated merchandise. "I was actually looking for some motor oil. For my car. I…" his smile turned sheepish. "I doubt it's the sort of thing you stock here."

  "Oh, I don't know," the old man replied, scratching his hunched back and adjusting his glasses. "I carry a little bit of anything and everything. Whatever I can get my hands on. It's for your car, you say?" He leaned over, producing a series of creaking pops from his spine, and began to rummage behind the counter.

  "Yeah," Quinn sighed. "It's sort of old. Burns oil like crazy, but gets me there in one piece most of the time, as long as I treat her right."

  "They'll do that," the man's voice wheezed from the depths of the counter. "Lessee. Oil… oil…" he reappeared, tilted his head back, and held a small can at arm's length, reading its label through his bifocals. "Three-in-one oil. That's not gonna do it, now, is it?" He smiled and laughed in a cracked voice.

  "No," Quinn agreed, becoming impatient. "Maybe you could just tell me where the nearest convenience store is. I can walk. Car needs to cool down anyway."

  The old man nodded knowledgeably. "Nonsense. I'm sure I've got something here. What viscosity you need?"

  Quinn regretted entering the store at all. He rolled his eyes as the old man turned away, shuffling noisily around his desk. "10-W-thirty. It doesn't really matter. She's an old Toronado and isn't exactly choosy. I just need to feed her something black and slippery every few dozen miles to keep her happy."

  The old man stopped and peered back over his shoulder, frowning slightly. "A Toronado, you say."

  Quinn nodded and endured the man's long, thoughtful gaze. "Does it matter?"

  "Might," the man nodded, turning toward the counter and heaving up a hinged partition. He stepped out into the dusty sunbeams, sighing theatrically. "Touchy things, old cars like that. Burning oil is really just a symptom. Why don't you show her to me? Maybe we can fix 'er up so she don't burn so much."

  Quinn frowned at the hunched old man, who merely stared back at him expectantly.

  "What," he shrugged and gave another wheezy laugh. "You gonna turn down an offer of genuine goodwill? What's this town coming to? Look, I drove a Toronado myself thirty years ago. I learned a few tricks about 'em. At the very least, it'll get me out of the shop for a quarter hour. So lead on, my young friend."

  Quinn almost said no, but (James saw) he had been ra
ised to respect his elders. And besides, maybe the old guy did know a few things about cars. It would be nice not to have to pull over every forty miles amid a cloud of oily blue smoke. With a wry smile and a shake of his head, Quinn turned toward the front door.

  Five minutes later, Quinn hunkered in front of the Toronado and popped the bonnet. It wrenched open with a screech and he held it up for the old man.

  "Hmm," the man muttered to himself, fiddling with a few wires and plugs. He leaned over the grill and peered into the depths of the engine compartment. To Quinn, he did not appear to be a man on the verge of fixing something. On the contrary, he seemed almost to be idly hunting around, prodding this and poking at that. He sniffed the hot air over the engine, and then stood up again with a shake of his head.

  "Not in there," he said, almost to himself.

  "What?" Quinn asked, becoming seriously annoyed. "I thought you said you knew how to work on these?"

  "Problem's not with the engine," the old man said with a brisk nod. "Has to be in the back. Open up the trunk. Let me take a look."

  "The trunk." Quinn repeated sceptically, lowering the bonnet.

  "That's what I said. Pop it open."

  Quinn slammed the bonnet and shook his head. "Look, if it's all the same to you--"

  "You want to get this thing running again or not?" the old man said, straightening for the first time. He was, Quinn saw, rather taller than he had at first appeared. His hunched back seemed suddenly remarkably straight. His voice even sounded firmer, less wheezy, more commanding. "Open the trunk and I'll make all your problems go away."

  Quinn glanced at the man with a mixture of bemusement and trepidation. Sighing, he shook out his keys.

  "My stuff's all back there," he said, leading the man toward the rear of the car. "You won't be able to see anything."

  "I'll be able to see just fine," the man said in a low, grating voice.

  Quinn socked the key into the lock and twisted. With a pop the boot opened.

  "Let me just--" he began, but the old man shouldered past him, bending low over the haphazard jumble of Quinn's luggage and duffle bags. He began to shove them aside, patting and probing them one by one. Quinn watched this with increasing incredulity.